and lo the day before yesterday in the Guardian newspaper or yesterday on Channel 4 News TV you had the damn fine Inigo Gilmore reporting on the UK sending back Sudanese asylum seekers to Khartoum (interviewing a Darfuri man), because as we all know the Home Office operates in a culture of snide disbelief that permeates through every fibre of some of its time-poor officials (well, how else can it be explained away?), as they are processing the claims of people to seek asylum in the UK and, furthermore, well, i don’t know.

John Reid, good lord.
you can’t doubt his sincerity to combat extremism but he runs a despicable department, how does that work; the horrid spectacle of an excellent journalist subjecting this bloke to psychological and medical tests to conclude that, yes, it seems he has been tortured, and still one assumes this is not quite enough to appease some of the morally reprehensible-in-effect and actually morally reprehensible bunch of clowns that appear to run the roost down in Whitehall, and so we have the appalling scenario of the Home Office sending people actually back on the way into hell, and then you remember this is consistent with the same Home Office that was sending Zimbabweans with failed claims back until robust opposition attacks on such a disgraceful and unsupportable policy, and then you remember that, what, what can you conclude about a department like that, i don’t know.

Tory MP John Bercow (Buckingham) deserves a medal by the pinched and miserable and small-spirited standards of some of his Home Office opposites for pointing out what any sane person can see.
(you could give him at least the same honours as Mick Jagger, anyway.)
incidentally, Tony Blair once called Bercow nasty and ineffectual – now, i don’t know any Buckingham constituents (perhaps it was a reference to local issues from the PM, after all) but if Bercow is ineffectual what does that mean for Reid?

"Sadiq's case is not isolated - I think there is a wider picture," Mr Bercow said. "There have been many cases of people who have been instructed to return to Khartoum who have been intimidated, threatened and tortured having done so. It's an extremely risky business for Britain to send people back."

what are you playing at Reid?

oh i forgot too busy having your officials crow – crow like some fucking mean-spirited gambler about your opponents lucking out! – about how Britain is all-the-while reducing its asylum burden, numbers getting lower all the time, the numbers game, all-the-while we are seeing less and less

[w’ apologies...]

the grotesque chaos of a Labour government - a Labour government

p.s.
Gilmore spoke to Khartoum’s man in London (not a monolithic govt these days, Darfur & Darfur conflict watchers remind us) as you may have seen, and granted we’ll not go there...

Elton John’s birthday bash in the Big Apple, with a few pals, was televised last night. (alas no ‘Tiny Dancer’.)
i want to say, ooh, three things about it:

(1) i did not know that Elton did quite that much for charity, and fighting AIDS. yeah i knew he was an incredibly generous and restless figure in the fight against HIV/AIDS (an absurd understatement for such an icon of largesse..), but the true figures were a gobsmacking surprise.
what an absolute legend, big big big love to Elton. clearly there are no words.
(and his putting Robert Downey Jnr in the video for ‘I Want Love’, still one of my faves of recent years.)

(2) Scots funnyman Billy Connolly has done work for Stonewall, many years ago, he said. (presumably this Stonewall, not any American organisation. i don’t know anything of the controversies detailed toward the bottom there and often go with what Peter Tatchell says, but looking at some of their achievements is heartening; eloquent defence, no?)
wow!

nice up your chest Billy, awesome.
ossum.

top, top, tip-top man. again, no idea here.
hadn’t a clue. foggiest.
gone right up in estimation. etc etc.

(3) Anne Hathaway, dancing, in a dress.

normblog (again!), arguing against - Food as a human right - one of the less persuasive points of that Economist leader the other day.

"in making the argument, The Economist fails to answer its own question" :
more here

i just got a spam mail, and the sender was called piss.

well it amused me

writing from a UK-centred perspective, are the current adventures of Conrad Black inspiring the biggest mass outbreak of schadenfreude in recent times?

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

"That is why the rights that make open politics possible...are so precious"

from The Economist, 22 March

&

Something more universal

+

the sun looked like a blood orange this morning

scrap yard dog

[Kroger, man. that’s some good shit]

They said Wae-halem’s name was on the blacklist

re. this report here, ‘It Was Like Suddenly My Son No Longer Existed: Enforced Disappearances in Thailand’s Southern Border Provinces’, it gets acknowledged that “most ‘disappearances’” in focus were “during Thaksin’s rule” though “many of the senior military and police officials who carried out this policy remain on active duty”, and “General Surayud’s government has done little to translate..promises into action”.

+

Everybody must be in Minsk

25th March.

Yasmin Sewell, the glorious Aussie who buys for Browns, was yesterday wearing a Fendi skirt and Jil Sander jacket, teaming it so well, and my jaw literally

hit the ground

the Ides






























detail from A Wall in Naples (1782, Thomas Jones, oil on paper)

Zimbabwe Vigil - London, UK
..
PRESS NOTICE
ZIMBABWEAN DEMO IN LONDON (14/3/07)

Zimbabweans in the UK are to demonstrate outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London on Wednesday in protest at the arrest and torture of peaceful protesters in Zimbabwe.

Supporters of the Zimbabwean opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), will gather outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London from 1 – 4 pm on Wednesday, 14th March 2007 in solidarity with the suffering of opposition activists in Zimbabwe.

They will be joined by supporters of the Zimbabwe Vigil, who have been demonstrating outside the Embassy every Saturday since October 2002 in support of free and fair elections and against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

For interviews etc, contact:

Ephraim Tapa, Chair, MDC UK – 07940 793 090

Julius Mutyambizi-Dewa, Secretary, MDC UK – 07984 254 830

Rose Benton, Vigil Co-ordinator – 07970 996 003

Matt Frei feels a bit sorry for Scooter.

the diminutive, courteous and mildly poetic consigliere

read it here.

[Frei is a good journalist.
i like him a lot.
he has a sense of humour, of course. but there's also warmth.
his pieces for tv following that man who walked across the USA last summer or so, in an attempt to lose weight - though that was not the only reason i believe - contained affection and feeling.
when he was in another part of the world for the BBC he filed some powerful pieces, bearing witness.
an article for the Sunday Telegraph from Herat will never be forgotten.
sadly it ended in this vast tragedy.]

Bless you, Ernest Gallo

John Reid.

words fail me.

for the second time in as many days today i heard a radio advert for the anti-terrorism hot-line phone number.
the first time i heard it i could not decide if i’d tuned into a satirical station or not.
i guess not.

Gilbert & George swearing at Tim Marlow

that's television

Iain Banks.
quite good at dodgy leaps.

i just heard someone sing an absolutely incredible ‘Amazing Grace’

wow